Woodland period

In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeologists distinguishing the Mississippian period, from 1000 CE to European contact as a separate period. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic term for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the agriculturalist Mississippian cultures. The Eastern Woodlands cultural region covers what is now eastern Canada south of the Subarctic region, the Eastern United States, along to the Gulf of Mexico.

This period is variously considered a developmental stage, a time period, a suite of technological adaptations or "traits", and a "family tree" of cultures related to earlier Archaic cultures. It can be characterized as a chronological and cultural manifestation without any massive changes in a short time but instead having a continuous development in stone and bone tools, leather crafting, textile manufacture, cultivation, and shelter construction. Many Woodland peoples used spears and atlatls until the end of the period, when they were replaced by bows and arrows; however, Southeastern Woodland peoples also used blowguns.

The most cited technological distinction of this period was the widespread use of pottery (although pottery manufacture had arisen during the Archaic period in some places), and the diversification of pottery forms, decorations, and manufacturing practices. The increasing use of horticulture and the development of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, consisting of weedy seed plants as well as gourd cultivation, also meant that groups became less mobile over time and, in some times and places, people lived in permanently occupied villages and cities. Intensive agriculture characterizes the Mississippian period from c. 1000–1400 CE and may have continued up to European contact, around 500 years ago.

The Early Woodland period continued many trends begun during the Late and Terminal Archaic periods, including extensive mound-building, regional distinctive burial complexes, the trade of exotic goods across a large area of North America as part of interaction spheres, the reliance on both wild and domesticated plant foods, and a mobile subsistence strategy in which small groups took advantage of seasonally available resources such as nuts, fish, shellfish, and wild plants. Pottery, which had been manufactured during the Archaic period in limited amounts, was now widespread across the Eastern Interior, the Southeast, and the Northeast. The Far Northeast, the Sub-Arctic, and the Northwest/Plains regions widely adopted pottery somewhat later, about 200 BCE.

The Adena culture built conical mounds in which single- or multiple-event burials, often cremated, were interred along with rich grave goods including copper bracelets, beads, and gorgets, art objects made from mica, novaculite, hematite, banded slate, and other kinds of stone, shell beads and cups, and leaf-shaped "cache blades". This culture is believed to have been core to the Meadowood Interaction Sphere, in which cultures in the Great Lakes region, the St. Lawrence region, the Far Northeast, and the Atlantic region interacted. The large area of interaction is indicated by the presence of Adena-style mounds, the presence of exotic goods from other parts of the interaction spheres, and the participation in the "Early Woodland Burial Complex" defined by William Ritchie

Pottery was widely manufactured and sometimes traded, particularly in the Eastern Interior region. Clay for pottery was typically tempered (mixed with non-clay additives) with grit (crushed rock) or limestone. Pots were usually made in a conoidal or conical jar with rounded shoulders, slightly constricted necks, and flaring rims. Pottery was most often decorated with a variety of linear or paddle stamps that created "dentate" (tooth-like) impressions, wavy line impressions, checked surfaces, or fabric-impressed surfaces, but some pots were incised with herringbone and other geometric patterns or, more rarely, with pictorial imagery such as faces. Pots were coiled and paddled entirely by hand without the use of fast rotation such as a pottery wheel. Some were slipped or brushed with red ochre.

Pottery, agriculture, and permanent settlements have often been thought of the three defining characteristics of the Woodland period. However, it has become evident that, in some areas of North America, prehistoric cultural groups with a clearly Archaic cultural assemblage were making pottery without any evidence of the cultivation of domesticated crops. In fact, it appears that hunting and gathering continued as the basic subsistence economy and that subsistence horticulture/agriculture did not occur in much of the Southeast for a couple of thousand years after the introduction of pottery, and in parts of the Northeast, horticulture was never practiced. This research indicated that a fiber-tempered horizon of ceramics greatly predates 1000 BCE, first appearing about 2500 BCE in parts of Florida with the Orange culture and in Georgia with the Stallings culture. Nevertheless, these early sites were typical Archaic settlements, differing only in the use of basic ceramic technology. As such, researchers are now redefining the period to begin with not only pottery, but the appearance of permanent settlements, elaborate burial practices, intensive collection and/or horticulture of starchy seed plants (see Eastern Agricultural Complex), differentiation in social organization, and specialized activities, among other factors. Most of these are evident in the Southeastern Woodlands by 1000 BCE.

In some areas, like South Carolina and coastal Georgia, Deptford culture pottery manufacture ceased after c. 700 CE.